|
Israeli media against me: Abbas
REACHING out to the Israeli people over the head of their Government, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas yesterday invited Israeli journalists to his headquarters to wish the Jewish people a happy Passover and to complain that he had become the target of unfair criticism by Israeli officials."Day and night, they are inciting against me in the Israeli media," he said. "We are not being given a chance." Instead of helping him stabilise his Government, Mr Abbas said, the Israeli Government was undermining it by failing to make promised concessions, such as completing the withdrawal of troops from West Bank cities. Mr Abbas has indeed been the target of sharp criticism by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and other officials for not disarming Palestinian militant groups, such as Hamas, and for not creating a strong security arm that could deal with the militants. Mr Sharon voiced these complaints again last week at his meeting in Texas with US President George W. Bush. They were repeated by Israeli Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who said that Mr Abbas was an improvement on his predecessor, the late Yasser Arafat, but not enough of an improvement to permit the peace process to move forward. "(Abbas) is not Arafat in that he's not ordering terrorist attacks himself, but he is also no Sadat and no King Hussein," Mr Netanyahu said, referring to the late Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, who made peace with Israel, and the late Jordanian king, who did likewise. "He's not doing anything to dismantle the terrorist organisations." The Palestinian leader told the Israeli reporters, whom he had invited for lunch, that his security forces had foiled dozens of planned attacks against Israel in the three months since he took office. The Palestinian Authority, he said, had also undertaken significant security, financial and administrative reforms which Israel has declined to acknowledge. "Give us time to act," he said. "And help us." Mr Abbas said that the mutual restraints agreed upon by him and Mr Sharon at a summit two months ago had been breached by Israel in a number of incursions into Palestinian territory and several killings. "Events such as these erode our legitimacy," he said. Although Israel has pulled its troops out of two West Bank cities, it has declined to do the same in five other cities on the grounds that the Palestinian Authority has not disarmed the men on Israel's wanted list living in the two cities evacuated. Mr Abbas told the reporters that the Palestinian Authority had disarmed the fugitives. Other Palestinian officials admitted, however, that not all had been disarmed. Mr Abbas took the occasion to send greetings on the Jewish holiday of Passover, which marks their liberation from the reign of Pharaoh Ramses II. From the smiles on the faces of the Palestinian hosts and Israeli reporters, it was clear they assumed Mr Abbas also had the liberation of Palestinian territories in mind. Posted by: God Save The World 2005-04-21 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=61944 |